Hastert, in Reversal, Backs Extension for 9/11 Panel

By PHILIP SHENON and CARL HULSE

Published: February 28, 2004

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — The speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, reversed himself Friday and announced that he would accept a 60-day extension of the deadline for a federal commission to complete its investigation of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The Senate, as expected, unanimously approved the extension earlier in the day, and Mr. Hastert's decision appeared to clear the way for Congress to grant one, until midsummer.

The 10-member bipartisan commission had warned that if it was required to meet its original, Congressionally mandated deadline to issue a final report by May 27, it would have to curtail its investigation and cancel several public hearings.

"We are overjoyed by the speaker's decision," said Al Felzenberg, the commission's spokesman.

Mr. Hastert's announcement followed heated maneuvering on Capitol Hill, where Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, had declared that unless the House agreed to legislation pushing back the deadline, they would hold up a highway bill needed to avoid the furlough of thousands of federal workers beginning Monday.

Once Mr. Hastert changed course Friday, the Senate quickly gave the highway measure final Congressional approval.

Mr. Hastert, Republican of Illinois, had previously said he was determined to block any extension, maintaining that members of the commission were leaking information from the inquiry to news organizations and that any delay in the final report would turn the findings into a "political football" in an election year.

The speaker had also said that the findings might be so valuable that they should not be delayed.

In a letter to the commission Friday, Mr. Hastert said he had been "reluctant to support this extension because I believe that the findings and recommendations that will be contained in your report may require immediate action by both the Congress and the executive branch in order to protect the American people."

But he said that he was also aware of the commission's "difficulties in obtaining clearances and in obtaining documents at the front end of the process" and that he was willing to support legislation that "removes the May 27 report deadline in current law and allows the commission to issue its report at any time until it goes out of existence on July 26, 2004."

Mr. Hastert described his offer as a "compromise," since it allows the commission's final report to be delayed until midsummer but would still require the panel to abide by the July 26 deadline to complete its administrative work and close its doors.

While that could pose extraordinary logistical problems for the commission, since it might be compelled to issue its final report and shut down its offices on the same day, the panel seemed eager to accept Mr. Hastert's offer. "Our main concern was always to get the additional 60 days to prepare the best possible report," said Mr. Felzenberg, the spokesman.

John Feehery, a spokesman for Mr. Hastert, said the speaker "is a reasonable man, and he was just trying to find a compromise."

He also suggested that despite the wording of Mr. Hastert's letter, the commission might be provided time beyond July 26 to close its offices.

On the Senate floor, Mr. McCain said it was his understanding that under the agreement reached between Mr. Hastert and other Congressional leaders, the panel would get an 60 extra days to finish the report and 30 days beyond that to wrap up, an outcome he said was satisfactory to the panel's leaders.

In other encouraging news for the commission, members said on Friday that the White House had agreed in recent days to allow its chairman, Thomas H. Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, and former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, to have access to much more information from daily intelligence briefings that reached the Oval Office in the months and years before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Under an agreement with the White House last year, Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton had been permitted far narrower access to the intelligence reports. The fuller access was given only to former Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democratic member of the commission, and Philip D. Zelikow, the panel's Republican staff director.

Mr. Hamilton said in an interview that he and Mr. Kean would now be allowed to see the material that had already been shared with Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Zelikow, and that the commission was pleased that the White House had allowed greater access. "We think this is important," he said.

Until Mr. Hastert's announcement, the standoff over the highway measure had threatened to force the temporary layoff of thousands of federal transportation workers whose salaries were dependent on passage of the bill by Sunday.

The bill provides an extension of highway and mass transit money funneled through the Department of Transportation. The spending authority was due to expire Sunday night and needed to be extended temporarily because Congress has not finished work on a highway bill covering the next six years.

The prospect of the layoffs of highway and transportation safety workers had loomed as an embarrassment to both the Bush administration and the Republican Congressional leadership, and irked lawmakers responsible for the highway measure. "Stop playing politics with people's lives," said Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, in demanding action on the highway bill.